Catholic Campaign for Human Development UPDATE

There are two stories online today about how the Catholic Campaign for Human Development is funding organizations that take positions contrary to Church teaching on abortion and same-sex "marriage." The CCHD will be allowed to hold a nationwide second collection the Sunday before Thanksgiving at nearly every parish in the United States.

One of the stories (disclosure--written by us) is in the California Catholic Daily, and the other by Patrick B. Craine is in LifeSiteNews.

We reported that in San Francisco the CCHD is funding two organizations (the Chinese Progressive Association and Young Workers United) who are on record as opposing Proposition 8. We also reported that the Young Workers United were on record as opposing Proposition 4, (which would have required the parent or guardian of an underage girl to be notified before she undergoes an abortion).

Mr. Craine's story reported that the Chinese Progressive Association was also on record as opposing Proposition 4. He also linked to a report prepared by the Bellarmine Veritas Ministry which documented other grants made by the CCHD to organizations which were in violation of their own funding guidelines. Those guidelines, created by a panel chaired by Bishop Roger Morin in the wake of the CCHD's ACORN funding scandal prohibit

“...partisan activity and funding of any group that engages in activities contrary to Catholic moral teaching, whether or not those activities are funded by CCHD. These criteria are actively enforced and have led CCHD to deny funding to many groups and to quickly terminate any group that violates these prohibitions. The Bishops’ CCHD Subcommittee and staff are reviewing these existing CCHD’s policies, grant agreements, and other safeguards in order to reaffirm and strengthen our protections in areas of Church teaching, financial and organizational accountability, and partisan political activity.”

Obviously, those guidelines are not being enforced. And it's not as if the disqualifying information for these groups was hard to find. As we said in the California Catholic Daily article "...it is impossible to see how the application from Young Workers United made it through the levels of the Catholic Campaign scrutiny."

One look at the homepage of their website should have set off alarm bells, and the link to the voter guide recommending opposition to Propositions 4 and 8 was the first item on their "Social Justice" page.

For more info, and suggested actions, please visit the comprehensive "National Campaign: Addressing the CCHD" page on the Bellarmine Veritas Ministry's website.

Posted by Gibbons J. Cooney